Jesse Thorn thinks a lot more highly of the Grado SR-60 headphones than I do:

They’re comfortable, and feature open construction, which means that you’ll be able to hear what’s going on around you in addition to your music. This is how your ears and brain were designed to process sound, and will improve your listening experience, not hinder it. Trust me.

Before I switched to closed Sennheisers for my primary headphones,1 I had a pair of SR-60s for so long that the earpads disintegrated, and I’d never call them “comfortable”. It’s not just me, either: this is a very common criticism of the SR-60 and SR-80. And their open-backed design renders them impractical or unusable in many situations.

The SR-60s always come up in entry-level awesome-sounding headphone recommendations because they do indeed sound amazing for the price. But they come with two huge practical caveats that should prevent reviewers from giving them a general-purpose, unqualified recommendation.

On Sennheiser, Jesse says: “Unlike Sennheiser, [Grado hasn’t] mass-marketed their once-quality products into extinction.” What does that mean? ↩︎